Adelaide heaved a sigh at her departure. “Thank you, Madame. It is as though no one understands what it must be like to not be pleased with a marriage to a stranger, and a moment alone to indulge in my misery is so very welcome.”

“Misery will flee when you hear what I have to say,” Madame told her in a lower voice, the accent much less pronounced now, her eyes bright. “Is your Lord Basset a handsome man?”

Bitterness rose in Adelaide’s mouth. “Yes, unfortunately.”

“Proud?”

“Undoubtedly.”

“Rich?”

Adelaide’s eyes narrowed. “Yes… very. He is paying for my trousseau, as you know.”

“Then let us give him a bride worth parading in St. George’s Hanover Square,” Madame Hubert urged with a sly smile. “You are a beautiful woman, Miss Dyer, and I have no doubt the man knows it. But he cannot imagine how you will look on the day of your wedding, and it would be all too delicious to leave him speechless, would it not? This fine arrangement of your father’s in which you had no say… why not say something now?”

There was something in the idea that relaxed a coiled tension within her, and Adelaide could not help but to smile in return. “I do enjoy having the last word, Madame.”

Madame’s smile turned into an all-out grin. “If you and I arrange things well enough, you shall have the only word, Miss Dyer.”

Oh, the taste of victory was there upon her lips, and nothing had been said or done yet. She might be powerless to stop the wedding, might be a pawn in this whole scheme, but she had already turned one thing to her advantage in his purchasing her trousseau. Why not do a good deal more that would declare emphatically to her husband that she was not voiceless in this arrangement, nor would she be so in the future?

“What did you have in mind, Madame?” Adelaide inquired, her eyes flicking to her mother’s position, eyeing them still, but far out of earshot.

“Gauze, Miss Dyer,” Madame said in a hushed tone, as though she were speaking of gold. “White gauze. Here.” She moved to a stack of fabric squares on a small table nearby, flicking through them until a neat square of the aforementioned sheer white fabric was before her. She plucked it out and came back to Adelaide, laying it across the lavender taffeta at her bodice. “An overlay of the entire gown, following the exact folds and patterns of what lies beneath. Perhaps cutting away at the skirts in front, draping like exquisite curtains. And gathering a collection of flowers to shape the bodice like so…”

Adelaide nodded in thought. “Why gauze, Madame? Surely lace would—”